TITLE: Teachers and Programming Languages as Permission Givers
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 24, 2011 10:23 PM
DESC:
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BODY:
Over spring break, I read
another
of William Zinsser's essays at The American
Scholar, called
Permission Givers.
Zinsser talks about importance of people who give
others permission to do, to grow, and to explore,
especially in a world that offers so many freedoms
but is populated with people and systems that erect
barriers at every turn.
My first reaction to the paper was as a father. I
have recognized our elementary and high schools as
permission-denying places in a way I didn't experience
them as a student myself, and I've watched running the
gauntlet of college admissions cause a bright, eager,
curious child to wonder whether she is good enough
after all. But my rawest emotions were fear and hope
-- fear that I had denied my children permission too
often, and hope that on the whole I had given them
permission to do what they wanted to do and become who
they can be. I'm not talking about basic rules; some
of those are an essential part of learning discipline
and even
cultivating creativity.
I mean encouraging the sense of curiosity and eagerness
that happy, productive people carry through life.
The best teachers are permission givers. They show
students some of what is possible and then create
conditions in which students can run with ideas, put
them together and take them apart, and explore the
boundaries of their knowledge and their selves. I
marvel when I see students creating things of beauty
and imagination; often, there is a good teacher to
be found there as well. I'm sad whenever I see
teachers who care deeply about students and learning
but who sabotage their students' experience by
creating "a long trail of don'ts and can'ts and
shouldn'ts", by putting subtle roadblocks along the
path of advancement.
I don't think that by nature I am permission giver,
but over my career as a teacher I think I've gotten
better. At least now I am more often aware of when
I'm saying 'no' in subtle and damaging ways, so that
I can change my behavior, and I am more often aware
of the moments when the right words can help a student
create something that matters to them.
In the time since I read the essay, another strange
connection formed in my mind: Some programming
languages are permission givers. Some are not.
Python is a permission giver. It doesn't erect many
barriers that get in the way of the novice, or even
the expert, as she explores ideas. Ruby is a
permission giver, too, but not to the extent that
Python is. It's enough more complex syntactically
and semantically that things don't always work the
way one first suspects. As a programmer, I prefer
Ruby for the expressiveness it affords me, but I
think that Python is the more empowering language
for novices.
Simplicity and consistency seem to be important
features of permission-giving languages, but they
are probably not sufficient. Another of my favorite
languages, Scheme, is simple and offers a consistent
model of programming and computation, but I don't
think of it as a permission giver. Likewise Haskell.
I don't think that the tired argument between static
typing and dynamic typing is at play here. Pascal
had types but it was a permission giver. Its
descendant Ada, not so much.
I know many aficionados of other languages often feel
differently. Haskell programmers will tell me that
their language makes them so productive. Ada
programmers will tell me how their language helps
them build reliable software. I'm sure they are
right, but it seems to me there is a longer learning
curve before some languages feel like permission
givers to most people.
I'm not talking about type safety, power, or even
productivity. I'm talking about the feeling people
have when they are deep in the flow of programming
and reach out for something they want but can't quite
name... and there it is. I admit, too, that I also
have beginners in mind. Students who are learning
to program, more than experts, need to be
given permission to experiment and persevere.
I also admit that this idea is still new in mind and
is almost surely colored heavily by my own personal
experiences. Still, I can't shake the feeling that
there is something valuable in this notion of
language as permission giver.
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If nothing else, Zinsser's essay pointed me toward a
book I'd not heard of, Michelle Feynman's Reasonable
Deviations from the Beaten Track, a collection of
the personal and professional letters written by her
Nobel Prize-winning father. Even in the most mundane
personal correspondence, Richard Feynman tells stories
that entertain and illuminate. I've only begun reading
and am already enjoying it.
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